“The hero’s journey always begins with the call. One way or another, a guide must come to say, ‘Look, you’re in Sleepy Land. Wake. Come on a trip. There is a whole aspect of your consciousness, your being, that’s not been touched. So, you’re at home here? Well, there’s not enough of you there.’ And so, it starts.”

What is the sleepy land? It is where you are not awake to your true self. It is the known, the comfortable, the place where you are not playing the bigger game of life that brings out your greatest self. If we do not use all of ourselves, we are sometimes forced through challenge to wake up.

 In the Hero’s journey, according to Joseph Campbell, there is a call and then a refusal of the call. How many times, have you refused the call only to have yourself be called again. In the movie Star Wars, Luke Skywalker refuses the call at first and doesn’t move forward until his whole world is destroyed. He is forced out of this sleepy world. He’d spent plenty of time up to that point, just complaining his life. The call presented itself and then he still resisted.

What will it take for us to answer our call? Do we need a disaster of some sort, or will we go easily into the unknown? The journey is individual to each of us and we all will eventually go one way or the other. The journey never ends and it can take a life-time or a moment – it is eternal.

A long time ago, I lived in a sort of comfortableness. I had everything I needed physically, but I knew something was missing. I spent many days in a big luxurious house at the edge of staircase with a deep longing, weeping and wondering what was wrong with me. Why did I feel this way? I had everything, but my heart was yearning for something, and I didn’t know what it was. I couldn’t name it. I didn’t know I was being called from my sleepy land. It was getting real uncomfortable. I stayed there for a while, and I know if I hadn’t moved, something would have come to move me.

After a series of events that are too long to express here, I met Patrick Feren, left my comfortable home and began my journey. That was the beginning, but not the end or the happily ever after. In fact, things got tough. If I believed in lifelines on the palm, I would have seen that I had taken mine and purposely moved it in the opposite direction. Like I said, it is not easy to go against everything comfortable and yet so uncomfortable.

I didn’t necessarily know how to walk through the conditional world without a struggle. It still took a moment to understand what it is to be conscious of your journey. Then I walked into a Science of Mind Center. I heard the words of a minister who asked, “Do you want your heart’s desire? It is possible.” I couldn’t believe it. It is? I wanted to know that. And so, I began my journey into the Science of Mind and I have never turned back since. I answered the call to action. Each time I crossed a threshold of growth, another appeared and another and another until I found myself here on Kaua`i. And, now nine years later I am called to action again.

I am living in Paradise, but I still had to come to understand that the real journey is within myself. Do I really believe the things I so want to share with the world? Yes, I do and each challenge is met with the Principles of the Science of Mind. I have to prove that I KNOW: God is all in all, I am God, and the Law of Cause and Effect is exact. I have to continue to apply the Principles. Being called to action means just that – called to live in action with the Principles of your belief system.

I am on a hero’s journey and every time I reach the mountain top, another peak appears. Perhaps this is the way life is. It certainly seems so. The hero’s journey is like the peeling back of an onion. We each have our own journey. More than likely, it has been with us since childhood. It is that thing we need to embrace about ourselves which we are either embracing or from which we are running away. The spiritual journey, the hero’s journey is not lived on the mountain top. It is lived by taking the mountain down into the world. We are given all the tools. We’ve peopled our world with the right people.

Ernest Holmes wrote, in the General Summary of the Science of Mind “In conclusion, what the world needs is a spiritual conviction, followed by spiritual experience. I would rather see a student of this Science prove its Principle than to have him repeat all the words of wisdom that have ever been uttered. It is far easier to teach the Truth than it is to practice It.”

The Science of Mind is meant to be practiced. It is meant to be taken into life and lived from the self. It is not something that someone can give to you. I can’t give it to you because you might not even want it. It is not a religion. It is not the TRUTH. It is merely a path to the Truth. One path, I’m sure of many. In the beginning of the Science of Mind, Ernest Holmes wrote this: “These lessons are dedicated to that Truth which frees man from himself and sets him on the pathway of a new experience which enables him to see through the mist to the Eternal and changeless Reality.

There might be mentors along the way, but eventually, one has to take the Principle like a mighty sword and keep swinging it until one reaches the place of full expression of the True Self. On the wall of the ancient temple was written, “Know Thyself!” We have it written above our platform at our Center. “To your own Self be true in 2022.” Are you being true to yourSelf? Your God Self? This is the hero’s journey.

 I know I am called in every moment to be more of myself than the day before. Sometimes, I get tired and say wouldn’t it just be easier to stay in the sleepy land? But, something always calls me to wake up. What about you? Are you called? Is the voice within saying: “Look, you’re in Sleepy Land. Wake. Come on a trip.”

When Covid19 hit us and the Center went into lockdown, that was a call to action. We were in the sleepy land. We were struck down by a disaster of sorts and had to wake up to that adventure. We could refuse the call. We didn’t. We were forced into claiming CSL Kaua`i and its purpose. We rose and triumphed. Our elixir was the learning that we had the ability to follow our intuition into the unknown. However, did we just preserve CSL Kaua`i only to go back into the sleepy land. Preserving something isn’t enough. We have to grow deeper. We face another call – the Unknown. What’s next? We are either refusing or answering the call individually and as a community?

I can’t go back to the sleepy land. Once I am awake, I don’t know how to go back to sleep. It’s like the saying, “A mind once expanded never returns to its original size.” Once we’ve seen the Universe in a flower, the ocean or in the stars at night and that same Universe within us, we cannot return to the sleepy world without extreme pain and discomfort. If we choose to ignore it, the call will always be there. As Joseph Campbell says, “The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.”

 It is about marinating in our own Truth. It is about serving the collective by taking care of our own consciousness. It is about answering the call to our own expansion that puts us in the arena with others who are doing the same. It is about a community of souls in service to themselves and to the world. Ernest Holmes wrote, “…If day by day we have a greater understanding and a clearer concept, if daily we are realizing more of Truth and applying It in our actions, then we are on the right path and eventually we shall be made free. It is a wonderful experiment and a great adventure to make conscious use of the Law, to feel that we can plant an idea in Mind and see it gradually take form.”

 I feel like CSL Kaua`i is most definitely on a hero’s journey, a seed planted in Law. It has been called into action. It has been called to find its place on this Island and in the world. However, that call begins with me, with Patrick, with all of us. It is about a community of like souls who are coming out of the sleepy land and living their true selves in their highest and best way. CSL Kaua`i will never be greater than all of us answering our individual calls to action.

Love and Aloha,

Rev. Rita Andriello-Feren, Co-Founding Minister CSL Kaua’i

My new book “What Do I Need to KNOW? 101 Thoughts That Changed My Life” is available on AMAZON